Bronzeville Etudes & Riffs Moves from Second Life® to Unity3 Platform

In a major expansion of concept, artist Philip Mallory Jones has moved the development of Bronzeville Etudes &: Riffs onto the Unity 3 game development platform, which will make it available on web browsers and on portable devices that use the iOS and Android operating syatems. He now calls this work an immersive graphic novel. Open it and you step into the Chicago South Side and experience life there as a Black American from the turn of the 20th century to the 1950s. 


See the Sept. 30 2011 post for background, or visit The ArtWorld Market Report website.

BRONZEVILLE Etudes & Riffs

Jacque Quijote is the avatar of artist Philip Mallory Jones in the Second Life^® virtual world. We selected the work of Jacque Quijote "In the Sweet Bye & Bye" as a "Pick of the Week" in May, 2007, and featured this work in our 2007 print monograph, The Second Life^® Art World. 

His current work-in-progress advances the development of narrative immersive space, and is a paradigm of the artistic exploration of virtual technology. Click on the image to the right and read all about it.  Then immerse yourself in it. 

First Life to Second Life

Mr. Jones has also written an extensive illustrated essay on his development of immersive technology art, beginning with his first Heathkit quartz crystal radio receiver as a youth in the 1950s. It is required reading for anyone interested in the creative process.

The essay, "First Life to Second Life: Notes on the Design and Development of a Synthetic World Installation, In The Sweet Bye & Bye: An Immersive Memoir:" can be read online.  Philip Mallory Jones  was Artist in Residence at Ohio University's Aesthetic Technologies Lab when he created In The Sweet Bye & Bye.
 
In April, 2011 he created a series of Mind Maps that visualize his current research and development for Bronzeville Etudes & Riffs. There are two kinds, one charts the narrative threads and navigation paths, the other is an accurate street map (in four parts) 1925-1955.

First Life to Second Life

 Review:
       First Life to Second Life
        by Philip Mallory Jones
        (aka SL Jacque Quijote)
 

We selected the work of Jacque Quijote "In the Sweet Bye & Bye" as a "Pick of the Week" in May, 2007, and featured this work in our 2007 print monograph, The Second Life^® Art World. Now Mr. Jones has written an extensive illustrated essay on his development of immersive technology art, beginning with his first Heathkit quartz crystal radio receiver as a youth in the 1950s. It is required reading for anyone interested in the creative process.

The essay, "First Life to Second Life: Notes on the Design and Development of a Synthetic World Installation, In The Sweet Bye & Bye: An Immersive Memoir:" can be read online at the website of Ohio University's Aesthetic Technologies Lab, where Philip Mallory Jones  is Artist in Residence.

THE IMAGINE CHALLENGE

and THE FLAGSHIP CHALLENGE
October, 2009—August 2010
University of Western Australia

Competition entries on view at UWA

Jayjay Zifanwe, quadrapop Lane, and the University of Western Australia (UWA) team welcome visitors to the announcement of the September Monthly Winners of the UWA 3D Art & Design Challenge (IMAGINE & FLAGSHIP competitions). This will be held at 5am SLT, October 11, 2009 at the Art & Design Platform on WASP Land. If that's out of your time zone or you are reading this at a later date, keep reading!

The challenges will run monthly through August 2010. Read on for how to enter the next challenge, or click here to teleport to their Second Life location.

There are 2 competitions running simultaneously, the IMAGINE challenge and the FLAGSHIP challenge. There are monthly prizes available separately for both, and the top 2 each month will go into the pool for the Grand Prize (which will have an expanded judging panel). You can enter as many times as you like or for any month that you choose. For the Imagine challenge there will also be a monthly prize for best non-scripted entry

THE IMAGINE CHALLENGE

In describing virtual worlds, it is often said, 'we are truly limited by only the imagination', and and that is the theme of this art challenge. The limits are the imagination. Create something that will take our breath away. Any form, any shape, any influence, any medium. Of this world, or the next! (size 100 prim)

Prizes will be offered to winners & runners-up every month till the 31st of August 2010. Grand Prize to be awarded at the end. Monthly winners & runners up to be displayed in the Second Life installation of the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, on the grounds of the University of Western Australia (UWA - this island). All winners COULD also be part of a real life (RL) exhibition of digital interactive art at the University of Western Australia in 2010.

IMAGINE PRIZES
Monthly Prize 3,500L (1st) 500L (2nd)

500L (Best non-Scripted entry)

Grand Prize 50,000L (1st) 10,000 (2nd) 

THE FLAGSHIP CHALLENGE
Design the UWA Cultural Precinct Flagship Building

Design a building that captures the essence of creative engagement, which could possibly be built.The University of Western Australia plans to build such a building in real life. It is to be called FUTURElab. FUTURElab will provide insights into the world we are shaping by putting a microscope on the research undertaken across the University. It will provide a showcase for the work of  SymbioticA for the architects and designers from UWA’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts who are exploring new possibilities for themselves and their communities and for those working with new and emerging technologies to shape our future. FUTURElab will incorporate a black box performance/screening environment, a science/art gallery and teaching and presentation space for a range of activities across campus. It will also provide a hub for the Creative Industries Innovation Centre (CIIC), of which UWA is a partner.

Prizes offered to winners & runners-up every month till the 31st of August 2010. Grand Prize to be awarded at the end. The winning entry, will be given a permanent location on the grounds of the SL grounds of the University of Western Australia. The winning entry may be considered as a possible baseline design for one of the actual buildings that will be built at the RL location of the expanding Cultural Precinct of the University of Western Australia. The creator of the building will be contacted to consult on how to turn the Second Life design, into reality.

FLAGSHIP PRIZES
Monthly Prize 3,500L (1st) 500L (2nd)
Grand Prize 50,000L (1st) 10,000 (2nd)

THE SECOND LIFE® IMAGINE FESTIVAL

October 9—15, 2009
  Imagine Festival features many programs 
UTSA Art Space Full-Sim Exhibition 
click here for a schedule of events

 
Gamma Infinity created this activated entrance sculpture

 

The Imagine Festival includes an ambitious program of music, poetry, drama, and interactive experiences. It launches at Four Bridges—a new Imagine build by AuraKyo Insoo. It spans 10 sims, and coincides with the opening of the Imagine Peace Tower commissioned by Yoko Ono. The Tower will be unveiled and officially opened on Imagine Peace Island at 3:30pm SLT, Friday 9 October.

Also featured in this year's festival is a major build offered by UTSA (University of Texas at San Antonio). The UTSA's newly developed Art Space consists of a full-sim exploration of the seasons that incorporates the artistic impressions of a diverse group representing of  artists. Each of these artists have made contributions to one or more of the seasons that speak to the future of weather in a unique way.

Other creative events to be found in the Festival are; Africa Live, Tales and Legends of Africa, CHAMBER of our HEART, Undersea Mermaid Poetry, Pentagon of Peace by Netroots Nation, and CARP (Cybernetic Arts Research Project).

According to their Press Release, The Imagine Network works for a better world, with a focus on human rights, as well as social and environmental justice for all. They aim to identify the root causes of the larger toxic global problems facing us in order to help find solutions, and to help people act together in cooperation toward that goal.

ArtWorld Market was given an advance tour of the UTSA installation on October 8 by Gary Kohime, IMAGINE@UTSA Director. There are works by established SL artists like Alizarin Goldflake and Artistide Despres, as well as emerging artists.

Seasonal art from Alizarin Goldflake
a view from inside her activated sculpture "Immersive Art_Halloween Haloes."

Sun's Birth" by Ub Yifu reminds us of the influence of early Starax sculptures.

Playing from the Grave

5th Annual Colloquium on the Law of Futuristic Persons

The above-titled conference will be held in the Second Life^® virtual world on December 10, 2009. It is organized by Terasem Movement, Inc. a not-for-profit organization that also publishes two Terasem Journals. The focus is on the rights of people who will be revived from biostasis—cryogenic preservation of legally (but not irreversibly) dead or near-dead people waiting for a cure, and cyberstasis—people whose consciousness is preserved digitally.

Does immersion in virtual reality involve similar legal issues? As the technology of personality archiving gets closer, VR citizens may opt to transition from DNA to silicon existence. The legal/ethical issues they are dealing with might make you think of Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov, but relevance is relative, in light of current concerns about AI and FMRI.

For example, one of the papers in the current issue of The Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness is "Pros and Cons of Corporate Personhood for Transbemans" by Dr. Martine Rothblatt: "Dr. Rothblatt imposes the legal notions of corporate personhood upon transbemans or futuristic persons, specifically those who transition from flesh-ware to software, and may lack the traditional DNA based biological substrate."

There are over 20 issues of the above journal and their Journal of Geoethical Nanotechnology, with articles by prominent scientists, lawyers, psychologists, etc. in the Terasem online archive.

If you would like to submit a paper for the conference, or have further interest in this, get in touch with the editor of the Journals, Loraine J. Rhodes, either through the Contact link on their website or by IM in SL to Lori Darling.

Maryva Mayo, Red Randt, Filthy Fluno and Feathers Boa at the Aho Museum

on The New Media Consortium Campus

Tayzia Abattoir, the Aho's curator, has again put together an exceptional exhibition combining established and emerging artists. It is Red Randt's first exhibition, and Filthy Fluno is the best known artist to emerge from the virtual world of Second Life to the "real" world, having had a six page article in The New York Times Magazine.

Waning
by Feathers Boa

We have previously seen Feathers Boa's "reactive" artwork, but the current show is a leap ahead and is particularly well put together. A series of images with text is on the walls of the gallery, each showing a stage of a woman's life. A feature of the work is that you cannot "camera around" to view it. Each one changes as your avatar approaches it, so if you try to observe this exhibition by standing in one spot, you will not see it. This has been a continually developing aspect of Feathers' works, hence the term "reactive."

In this case the proximity dissolves the woman's image, revealing the remainder of the text. It is a thoughtful and satisfying series. The artist has mastered the technical aspects of this medium and is applying a maturing sense of narrative sequential art and metaphor.

We have seen many artists use interactivity in gimmicky ways, or for its own sake, but in this case it is integral to the work.

This is the first time we have seen Italian artist Maryva Mayo's work, abstract images that are in motion. They are beautiful, but transcend the decorative with a confident sense of spatial depth and interaction of line, form, and transformation.

The influence of abstract expressionism and gesture painting is strong. "La rinascita," for example, evokes Mark Tobey and Rothko.

La rinascita - La renaissance-The rebirth G
New introductions of energy
by Maryva Mayo

The images on this page are just snapshots of a moment in each of the works--you have to stay and watch them "perform" to fully experience them.

Cosmic explosion
by Maryva Mayo

You also can use your camera to go inside these works and experience them as a full screen light show, as in this internal view of "Dream / Sogni."

Dream / Sogni by Maryva Mayo

The 26 works by Red Randt exhibit a wide variety of techniques, primarily sculptural. Some are stationary, while others are active. "The Wobbly Building" (right) is a flexi prim work that collapses and "inflates."

Several of this artist's works are "hommage,"--tributes to artists including Magritte (a pipe that says "This is not a Magritte") and this "soft" building, which is a tribute to Claes Oldenburg.

The Wobbly Building
by Red Randt

These works are well done and fun, with a sense of pun and wordplay. The artist's extensive notes, for example, are dispensed by clicking on this sculpture of notes:

Notes
by Red Randt

Filthy Fluno continues his exploration of Surrealism, Expressionism and Symbolism with mixed reality works that involve images inspired by his virtual world experiences, executed in real world pastel or oil paint, photographed, digitally manipulated, and imported into Second Life.

In some cases the image is duplicated and flipped, creating a bug-eyed creature from which the multilayered content emerges. The current work reminds us of Alfonso Ossorio.

New Glasses Mirrored #1/5 Aho Edition
by Filthy Fluno